The Wisdom of 10 Marketing Geniuses

Start the fall with a brain bursting with brilliance

Aug 18, 2023

This is the second and final week of my vacation, so once again I won’t be putting out fresh content for anyone but my paying supporters. To tide you over, I’ve prepared a recap of my ‘Masters of Marketing’ series so far. It represents the wisdom of 10 marketing geniuses, all in one place.

Simply click on the links below to absorb the lifetimes of knowledge contained within. The list is in chronological order going back more than a century.

The Masters of Marketing

Share The SciMark Report

For Premium Subscribers🔒

Past this point, it’s paying subscribers only. Find out what products DR marketers thought were so good, they were worth spending tens of thousands of dollars to create and test a TV commercial — and more!

Recent Tests

A few weeks ago, I congratulated Emson for testing an “original” product (Better Air), by which I meant something that wasn’t just another entry under an existing brand. This week BulbHead deserves similar praise — even though the item is technically under one of its brands. It’s just that the brand doesn’t stand for anything that would make it easy to add items to it (unlike hoses or pans), so every item is original in that sense. (This may or may not be a good thing.)

Ruby Holding Hands

Pitch: “You just wrap and clap — the hands automatically stick together”
Offer: $9.99 for a pack of eight
Marketer: BulbHead

This is the fifth entry under the Ruby brand since the 2022 hit Ruby Sliders. The last test was Ruby Monkey Magnets in May. The last rollout was Ruby Space Triangles, which is #19 on the DRMetrix this week.

As mentioned, it’s hard to see a pattern here except ‘various, red-colored household gadgets.’ I’m not sure what the brand strategy is meant to be (if there is one). As for the product, it’s also much weaker than the original item. It’s more of a novelty item than a necessary problem-solver, and it also faces a ton of competition — including the free twist-ties that come with most cables.

King Komb

Pitch: “Dual-sided grooming and deshedding tool”
Offer: $19.99 for one with free shipping, Klean Paws (free)
Marketer: King Kanine

This is the second King Kanine test this year. I wrote about the first, King Kalm, in May. The category history is pretty favorable here, although it has been a while since there was a hit. You have to go back to 2016’s True Touch, and then back a decade more to 2006’s Shed Ender, to find notable successes.

To review all recent tests (and search my archives going back to 2007), visit The Library of DRTV. Don’t have access yet? Just shoot me an email, and I’ll give you a free ‘library card’ as an extra thank-you for being a premium subscriber.

Promising Products

Laundry Turtle

Source: The 28 Best Viral TikTok Items

This practical problem-solver for small laundry loads also has a cool demo. As the source article puts it: “You place it on top of your wet clothes in the washer, rotate the drum, and boom! Your wet laundry lands straight into the ‘shell’ of your turtle companion, making transferring clothes to the dryer easier.”

Besides going viral on TikTok in June, it’s doing well on Amazon at $29.99 with a Top 50 showing in Laundry Bags and high customer satisfaction at 4.6 stars. It seems like just the sort of quirky item that could do well on TV if it finds its audience.

Old Gold

Let’s stick with our theme and check out the week after Christmas again. The old rule of thumb is seven to 10 years, and we’ve done 10 years, so let’s do seven years this time. Let’s see…Seven years back from January 2024 puts us at January 2017. That isn’t too long ago, so let’s add a twist and look at the most interesting campaigns from the bottom of the DRMetrix for that first week of the year.

The SciMark Report